9 Dishes on the Menu
Logic puzzles require you to think. You will have to be logical in your reasoning.
A particular inn always offers the same nine dishes on its dinner menu: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H and I. Five foreigners arrive. Nobody tells them which dish corresponds to each letter and so they each select one letter without knowing what they will eat. The innkeeper arrives with the five dishes ordered and puts them in the center of the table so that they can decide who eats what. This goes on for two more nights. The foreigners, who are professors of logic, were able to deduce by the dishes they ordered which letter represents what dish. What could have been the dishes ordered each of the three nights? Note: Each dish was ordered at least once.
Answer
They could have ordered ABCDD their first night (finding out what D is), AEFGG the second night (finding out what G is and what A is, since they had ordered it the previous night too), and BEHII the third night (finding out what I, B and E are). This leaves C, F and H out, and since they had never ordered these dishes twice, and each came out on a different night, they should know what they are.
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Comments
cyberkitten
Oct 12, 2001
| I got it a different way:
Night 1 :A, B, C, C, D
(duplicate dish is C)
Night 2: A, F, D, D, E
(duplicate dish is D, dish same as previous night is A, dish missing from previous night is B)
Night 3: E, G, G, H, B
(duplicate dish is G, dish same as previous night is E, dish H is new dish, dish I is the dish never ordered) |
vivek
Oct 21, 2001
| The very last sentence of the puzzle states "Each dish was ordered atleast once". In your solution, you say that dish I was never ordered. Hence, your solution is incorrect. However, if that last sentence was omitted from the puzzle, your solution would have also been correct. |
jeevan
Nov 12, 2002
| One of the best. Straight to my favourites. |
na-iem
Mar 13, 2003
| Good one! |
tec_ocd
Jan 09, 2004
| i think your comment is wrong vivec |
chuckelect
Feb 08, 2005
| great logic teaser!! |
seanlandrews  
Oct 13, 2006
| How would they know which dish was "B" and which dish was "E"? They would know which two dishes to narrow them down to, but not which was which. |
JasonD 
Aug 02, 2008
| Outstanding! The solution algorithm somehow reminded me of the technique used in playing Mastermind... but don't ask me to quantify that.
...
seanlandrews - They distinguish E & B by remembering which dish they'd seen the first night (B) and which they'd seen the second night (E). |
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